Web-based providers of customized products, taking advantage of the capabilities of the World Wide Web and modern Web browsers, operate Web sites that provide online design services for user's desiring to create customized materials from any computer with Web access at whatever time and place is convenient to the user. These service providers typically provide their customers with the ability to access the service provider's Web site, view product templates, and use software tools provided by the site to select a template, add text or other content, and perform various modifications to create a personalized custom product design. After the product has been designed by the user, Web-based service providers also typically allow the user to place an order for the production and delivery to the user's home or business of quantities of high quality, printed products of the type that the user is not capable of producing with the printer systems typically connected to most personal computer systems.
Web-based providers of customized products, like virtually all businesses, strive to attract new customers through various advertising and customer acquisition channels. Sending promotional emails to rented lists of email addresses from other companies is one common technique, but list renters rarely, if ever, obtain access to specific personal information about the individuals or companies associated with the email addresses. Promotional email communications are typically in the form of bulk, standardized emails describing one or more of the company's products or services and containing one or more links to the company's Web site. Response rates to bulk email campaigns are typically low and any parties coming to the site in response to the email must typically “start from scratch” in the product design process.
There is, therefore, a need for a novel collaborative system and method for acquiring new customers by using email solicitations that take advantage of available information about the email recipient to facilitate the design process by presenting a partially or completely finished product design created automatically by the product vendor.